Minute Men

In early May, retired San Jose police officer
Hank Schriefer,70, was working in his Lake Wildwood garden when he felt a familiar pain
in his chest. He’d had a mild heart attack the year before, so he
knew the signs. That time, he’d been taken to a local hospital,
stabilized and transferred to Sacramento for angioplasty. This time was
different. As his pain worsened, Hank took an aspirin and nitroglycerin,
and asked his wife to dial 911. Then, as Hank put it, “Everything
went to heck.”

When paramedics from the Penn Valley Fire District arrived, just five minutes
later, Hank was barely conscious, with low blood pressure and a heart
rate of only 28 instead of the normal 60-100 beats per minute. Hank recalled,
“My eyeballs had rolled back in my head. I knew I was on my way
out.”

The three-man team, led by Firefighter/Paramedic
Eric Suarez, gave him oxygen and began ‘pacing’ his heart with external
electrical stimulation. “Eric did a super job. Even though I was
out of it, I could see that he really took charge,” said Hank. The
ambulance was soon heading down Hwy 20 to the Emergency Department at
Rideout Memorial, a certified STEMI-receiving center equipped and staffed
to treat extremely serious heart attacks. They would make the winding
35-mile trip in just 30 minutes.
Every minute counted.

Just six weeks before, the Penn Valley FD rigs had been equipped with wireless
EKG machines, and the paramedics trained by Rideout’s ED Clinical
Nurse Educator, all funded by the Rideout Foundation. This was the first
time they would be used in the field. While en route, Hank’s precarious
cardiac status was being transmitted to the Rideout ED, where a multi-disciplinary
team of emergency and cardiac specialists — physicians, nurses and
techs — were already mobilized.
Every minute counted.

Upon arrival, Hank was surrounded by the STEMI team and taken straight
to the cath lab, where interventional cardiologist
Dr. Karanbir Grewal inserted a temporary transvenous pacemaker. The blockage in Hank’s
right coronary artery was 100%. They aspirated the clot in his artery
and put a stent in place. The circulation to the heart was restored in
only 17 minutes from arrival to the hospital.
“He was in cardiogenic shock, a condition with a mortality rate
greater than 80%,” said Dr. Grewal, who began practicing at Rideout in 1998.

After a night in Rideout’s Cardiac ICU and a second in the cardiac
“step down” unit, Hank went home to his wife and his garden.
“Everyone at the hospital was great, and they were really good with
my wife. I was very impressed. After three years as a Firefighter/Paramedic,
Eric Suarez already considers the outcome of this 911 call “the
highlight of my career.”

From the time the paramedics reached Hank in Lake Wildwood to the restoration
of blood flow to Hank’s heart at Rideout, only 88 minutes had elapsed.
Every minute counted.

“The sooner, the better,” stressed Dr. Grewal, who is Board-certified
in both clinical and interventional cardiology, is how quickly one should
seek help for a heart attack. Heart damage is a function of time. “Everyone
must be educated to call 911 immediately and take an aspirin.”
Every minute counts.